


You are What you Love and Misery Loves Company

by Charlie Rotanev (Immerghensi)



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band)
Genre: Demons, Depression, I Don't Know Anymore, Loneliness, M/M, Misery, Not sure if they're real or not, Other, Sacrifice, internal struggles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 17:57:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5014432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Immerghensi/pseuds/Charlie%20Rotanev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm so lonely. I want to go home...." He whispers in the dark of the lime-light halls.<br/>/You know you can't./ she says. /This is your problem and yours alone. Don't be selfish./</p>
            </blockquote>





	You are What you Love and Misery Loves Company

**Author's Note:**

> Just something I wrote instead of doing that paper that was due 7 hours ago. Oops.

He’s a master at hiding behind a smiling mask, putting on a show for the Fans. It’s still a little harder avoiding his friends, but Ash is getting used to it. He can survive on his own.

It’s been five months since the black cat came back. As a child, they’d pumped him so full of medicine that he couldn’t see straight, but at least the cat couldn’t bother him. Therapist after therapist washed his mind until he only remembered her as a figment of the worst nightmare he’d ever had. There were a handful of years where she hadn’t come back, but he knew she wouldn’t stay gone forever.

Ashton was her home. 

She slinks around in the corners of sights now, jumping away just as soon as he turns. She taunts him with her presence which no one knows about and absolutely cannot know about. The black cat is his demon; his monster. He can’t let her hurt anyone else. 

*

She stood in the crowd amongst the roar of the fans, a small poise figure waiting for him, patient like she’d always ben. As soon as they walked off the stage, Ashton ran off to the dressing room and into the attached bathroom to tell himself the black cat wasn’t real, and that he could beat her. He looked himself in the mirror and she came out from behind him. He turned, quick and scared, but found nothing. He whipped back around only to find that she had materialized in front of him, her face just inches from his. 

_This cannot last._ She sighed. _You do not remember your lessons. You do not remember why you cannot love or be loved._

“Leave me alone.” He said over and over and over. 

_Do you love your family?_ She asked, circling around him. Ashton covered his ears in an attempt to ignore the monster, but her voice vibrated in his head. 

_I said, do you love your family?_

“Yes!” he cried. He could hear the others outside, drunk on adrenaline and nervosa. They were laughing and singing and had no idea what was going on in the bathroom. 

_Good. And do you love Luke?_

In one fluid moment his heart drops into his stomach and his pulse slows.

The liquid shadow knew.

Faultfaith knew. 

“Yes.” He answered again in a defeated voice. 

_Then do what is best for them and leave them. Protect them. Distance yourself from them. There is no other way._

“But there must be-“

 _THERE IS NO OTHER WAY._ The dark mass appeared before him with its glowing orange eyes the only light he could see. The set of spires along its back exploded into a thousand splintering quills

“But why?” He tried to shout, but somehow his voice had been dampened and though his throat rubbed dry with screams only a pitiful groan could be heard inside the room. 

Inside the room and nowhere else. 

_THE HEAVENS MUST BE FED AND PAIN IS WHAT IT CRAVES._

*

Faultfaith keeps a tight hold on him, appearing at some of the most inconvenient moments to remind him that he cannot afford to get any closer than he already has. He’s on the verge of breaking. He wants to tell someone, but he can’t because he knows the consequences. The only times she doesn’t bother him constantly is when he’s been alone for hours on end. He can’t let her win.

But the consequences….

“Do you want to come home, Ashton? We might be taking a break soon, just to unwind, you know?” Cal asks him. He wants to go home. He wants to see his little siblings again and run around like a carefree kid again with his mother’s love supporting him like the wind underneath the wings of a bird.

But he can’t.

He knows that if he goes back, he’ll only hurt them, and he could never do that.

“I guess not…” he shrugs. 

“Really?" 

**No.**

_Remember your family._

"Are you sure?" asks Michael. 

**I have to stay.**

_There’s a good monster._

“Yeah…. There’s some stuff I should do...” he waves his arms around for emphasis. “y’know….. here.”

Calum looks at him funny, then at him with concern. He pats Ashton on the shoulder and says,

“Alright… if you need anything, you know you can call up any of us. All the moms would be happy to have you over.”

_No they wouldn’t._

“Yeah uh…. Ok, tell them I say thanks.” 

*

“But what if I write to them? Or call them? Then they aren’t really in coming into contact with me and I can still talk to them. Explain why I’m not coming home…?” he asks hopefully. It’s been four months since the other boys went home, nine since he’s been home. 

 

 _If you do that, I follow them. Anything you do or say is poison. Do you really want to give this to your brother? Your sister?_ Faultfaith was taller than him now. The shadow has grown so much bigger and stronger to the point where she could look down at him while whispering horrors into his ear at nighttime. _Forget it. Your life is your prison now and your conscience your own jailor. You were made for solitude._

 

“Why are you doing this to me?” He cries. The black cat curls around him in his hotel room, absorbing the light and leaving him in a perpetual darkness.

 

 _I have done nothing. I have only opened your eyes to what you truly are. Do not blame your own faults on me._

*

The only place he can’t be affected by the cat is on stage. There’s so much light and noise and fire that she simply can’t exist there. He can forget, for at least a little while, that one day he’ll have to leave his people behind and that it is only a matter of time. Ashton feels like an addict looking forward to every situation when they’re all together and Faultfaith’s icy grip can’t touch him. 

 

 _You thought you could get away from me._ She whispers from her perch on his shoulder. There are people staring at him now. He can’t let anyone know she’s come back. The others can see he’s visibly shaken but they can’t tell why and even though that’s a relief it’s horrifying. She laughs like she knows he’s walked straight into her trap. Once the cameras are out of his face, Ashton makes a run for isolation. With each footstep he loses himself as the black cat dances in the shadows before him. _You will never be rid of me. You will never forget what I have taught you. I am you and you are me and nothing will change that. Accept your curse. Accept your fate!_

*

There are so many things he wishes he could say. So many feelings.

“Ashton….” Luke has found him lying on the couch, alone, of course, in the shadow of the moon, wondering how he can keep his friends and family safe from Faultfaith. 

Safe from himself. 

Ashton tries to curl away from Luke, but the boy is so much taller and broader that there’s nothing he can do to prevent those long arms from wrapping around him. Ash soaks in the feeling like the ground after a drought. He takes the time to memorize the way having someone so strong around him feels against his taut skin. The way Luke smells and how his muscles tense as he tries to make both of them comfortable. How his heart is so slow and steady like the rhythm of the ocean. Ashton closes his eyes and prays to whoever is listening that Luke will hold onto him for just a little bit longer; wrap around Ashton just a little bit tighter. 

“I’ve missed you. The old you. Please stop running away from us.” He murmurs. Ashton’s eyes fly open.

Faultfaith’s demonic orange ones stare back at him. 

She smiles until her rows of shark teeth span across her face like the Cheshire cat. 

Ashton recoils from Luke’s touch. Faultfaith is here and she knows what’s going on because when does she ever not, and if he gets any closer to Luke she’ll start leeching off of him and he can’t let that happen. 

“What did I do wrong?” Luke asks, confused at the sudden movement. Behind him, Faultfaith is seeping out of the dark patches in the wall like the liquid shadow she is. She’s ready to pounce on him like a panther, but she stops to look at Ashton. 

_Make your choice._

He wants to shout out to Luke to watch out, to not let himself he taken by the demon. He can't lose Luke to the shadow. That would be a fate worse than death.

 

So he does the next-best thing he can think of. 

 

“I should go.”

“Wait! Ash! I didn’t-“

He doesn’t stay long enough to hear the end of Luke’s sentence. The black cat, now a night-black panther, pads silently behind him as he locks himself into his room. He falls asleep to Faultfaith standing at the foot of his bed and the sound of Luke’s mournful sobs from the next room. It hurts so much, knowing that he’s hurt the one he loves, but it’s for the best.

He’s protecting Luke.

It’s worth the pain if he can’t hurt Luke any more than he has. That night, he plays the encounter back like a tape in a Walkman and tries to conjure the same feeling, but he knows that it isn’t the same. Instead, he wraps himself up and goes to sleep with a watch under his pillow. He falls asleep with the imagination that he’s not alone, but instead resting peacefully listening to Luke’s heart. 

*

Michael and Calum know that something is very wrong with the band. Between Ashton’s depressive melancholy and Luke’s sudden woe, it’s almost impossible to miss. None of them talk on the way to the show and when Luke sings and interacts with the audience, they notice that his eyes have changed. Like a button on a computer, the glow in his eyes has faded into the background and now there is nothing. 

*

Ashton goes off by himself all the time with Faultfaith constantly at his side. She congratulates him on finally learning his lesson- that he is made of betrayal and destined for loneliness. 

*

Luke stands nobly among the others with the grim resolve to keep pretending like nothing is wrong, like his heart doesn’t ache every time he sees Ashton. He finds some reason to cry almost every night, and now he’s begun to see an old friend who claims he can help him. 

From the misty air outside his window, Sorrowanchor comes down and flutters onto his shoulder. He materializes opposite Luke, red eyes glowing.

_You’ve been brave, I see, but you can’t hide what you really are forever._


End file.
